Daily Archives: September 1, 2009

Digital Wrongs Management

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Gordon Ramsey, of TV’s Hell’s Kitchen, may have a nasty streak but he’s doing a nice little reclamation project in my home town of Babylon, NY this week.  He is filming an episode for Fox in which he brings a restaurant back from the brink.

If I knew how to load pictures on my blog I’d put up a camera phone shot of Gordon and my son. Hopefully, I wouldn’t get sued.  Certainly my son can’t sue, he signed a waiver — as did the rest of the school kids and teachers.  Why? Because as part of the episode Gordon threw a picnic on the football field and should any of the kids or teachers likenesses be aired, the network needs signed releases.

As an added bonus, the school band was asked to perform at the picnic.  However, at the 11th hour the band had to go back to school and learn a new song, because the initial song they had prepared and practiced was “rights protected.”  (Something from the Beatles catalog, I wonder?)  Off they went to find a song that was royalty-free.  They didn’t have much time to practice, the new song just “okay,” and their collective 15 minutes of fame tarnished.  When will this madness stop?

Tags: Gordon Ramsey, Hell’s Kitchen, Digital Rights Management, Fox

The Flavor of TV

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It’s heartening to know that one of the reasons for the growth of social networking is the surfeit of drivel emanating from the TVs across America.  TV today is so bad for teens and Gen Y that they watch reruns almost as much as original programming.  How many times can you watch New York wave her hands in Flavor Flav’s face. 

This epiphany came to me while reading a Facebook blog about how its log-ons tank as soon at Grey’s Anatomy goes on air. 

Why do kids like Flav?  Because he’s entertaining.  His antics, even the third time, are better than the teen psycho-dramas of prime time television. 

Let’s improve the programming and I bet the TV numbers come back up for the young demo.  Pretty simple.

Tags: Flavor Flav, Grey’s Anatomy, Television Programming, Facebook

FoxSpace

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At a recent PSFK conference ad pundit George Parker mentioned that Rupert Murdoch was about to “f” up MySpace by covering it in Fox content.  Well, there was a link in the MediaPost today suggesting that MySpace has plans to add a news channel to MySpace. 

Jesus! MySpace already owns the “middle” of the social networking space now they want to add professional news content?  They would be better off adding a channel called people’s news, where regular people report what they see, a la, “there’s a traffic accident on Route 80.” Or, “there’s a hold-up underway in the 7-11 in Bumpus Mills.

News Corp is getting overly greedy and trying to spread its seed in too many places. This will end up being a mistake for them and will dilute their powerful MySpace franchise.

Tags: Rupert Murdoch, MySpace, PSFK, George Parker, News Corp

Apple just dinged Facebook.

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I saw a tee-shirt and have a picture of it on my Zude page that reads “I Facebooked your mom.”  I gotta get one.  Well, it looks like Steve Jobs just Facebooked Mark Zuckerberg.  Jobs and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins announced yesterday that they are setting up a $100 million fund to support software developers who create apps for the iPhone.  Okay, maybe Jobs borrowed the idea from Mr. Zuckerberg, but in a true senior moment, capitalist way, he is creating a more tangible monetary incentive for independent coders which should bring them and their sticker bedecked laptops scurrying to the iPhone. 

Put away those cow tossing apps. Put away those nuisance invitations to join the best haircut club, or the “Who has the best “gap tooth smile” group.  Now you can make some serious. Money.

Approved iPhone apps will go up on a new service called the App Store (Get it? App, as in Apple.)  Apple will keep 30% and I’m not sure if the remainder goes to the developer or if Kleiner keeps some points, but it is sure going to beat counting cows.

That’s a nice first day on the job for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s new COO. More on her later.  Peace out from Canadian Music Week!

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Facebook, Google, Apple, App Store, Steve Jobs, Zude, application developers

Officemax elf

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Are you Elfing kidding?

Over the Christmas holidays OfficeMax and their agency Toy Inc. cobbled together a fun little creative effort to build gift sales.  Not many people go to OfficeMax to roam the store looking for Christmas/Holiday inspiration, so getting bodies into the store that time of year for anything other than pen sets and desks is probably a challenge. 

The program, a piece of branded entertainment called Elf Yourself, generated 36 million visits to the online site over 5 weeks. 

Here’s a quote from Ad Age on the program results: “It ended up with a 20% bump in online traffic during the holidays, though it’s tough to say if the web effort was responsible for a sales rise at OfficeMax.” 

Are you Elfin kidding me?

If I parse the Ad Age sentence, the quote either means that 36 million new consumer impressions did not translate into store sales, or there weren’t any increased store sales.

I certainly hope it was the former and that there were increases but management felt they couldn’t be sure they were attributable to the 36M impressions. (Must have been those holiday point of sale signs and end-caps.)  If stores sales were not up YOY, then I would call that an Elfing opportunity lost.

Dashboard my ass.

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The pop marketing term of the last couple of years has been “dashboard.”  As a brand planner who advocates “windshield” planning rather than the more common “rear view mirror planning” approach, I get the dashboard metaphor.  

The marketing dashboard contains dials and gauges that monitor the performance of marketing programs.  These metrics are valuable for sure but if one doesn’t look out the windshield and truly see what’s coming, they are driving with their head down.

Great marketers don’t wait around for consumer behaviors to be measured, great marketers decide what consumers will like…before they like it.  They see in front of the dashboard.  The future is a beautiful place.  

Tags: Marketing dashboard, brand planning

ADD

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The ADD-ification of America. 

One of the biggest cultural phenomena in America today is what I call ADD-ification. We all have attention deficit disorder.  We can’t sit still and we’re always in a hurry.  When was the last time you drove your car without some form of entertainment — using the time to think?  Thought so. 

Newspaper stories have gotten shorter, the chapters in our novels can be measured in paragraphs not pages, our meals come in microwavable packages, we even beep at people who sit at traffic lights for more than 5 seconds.  Why?  Because we’re in a hurry. 

How many advertising or branding briefs today are predicated on the insight that we are all pressed for time?  I certainly have written a few. 

Stress is at an all-time high I would imagine, but with the right meds, we can get by.  But hurry, the pharmacy closes at ten!  

(I’ll be off for a few days, see you Tuesday.)

Tags: ADD, Marketing

Crispin

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Junk in the trunk.

Crispin Porter is a good ad agency.  That said, I’ve often wondered whether they can represent large consumer brands in a way that actually grows and sustains business.  I’m not alone.  They have taken some heat in the press and had high profile account losses.

This past weekend, though, they ran a Volkswagen Jetta ad in the New York Times and it was “terrific.”  Sitting beneath the traditional silhouetted car photo – the traditional layout from years past – was the headline “Junk in the Trunk.”  I couldn’t pass it by.  Expecting to read about extra trunk space, I was surprised to find out all about Jetta’s extra features. 

I know Crispin is a great media company and that they conceive startling creative, but maybe they should just sit the creative teams down and ask everyone to hone their print advertising skills.  Our business is not only about being inventive, it’s about learning how to “sell.”  This may be a good place for them to recharge their batteries.   

Tags: Cripsin Porter, Volkswagen, Jetta, New York Times

Obfuscation

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Obfuscation or planned confusion?

So, I’m reading the New York Times over the weekend and I hit upon a sentence that causes me to vigorously shake my head to clear out the cob webs.  I read it again and again and still couldn’t wend my way though it’s mash-up of double and triple negatives.  Here it is:

“…he opposes (first negative) a ban (second negative) only if it failed (third) to include an exception (fourth) to protect the life of the mother.”

When they write this stuff, are they smiling?

This type of obtusion (Is that a word? It should be.) is what keeps people from reading.  Have you ever, I mean ever, read a user license agreement on a Web site?  Or read a prospectus?  How about an annual report financial section?  Is obfuscation a cottage industry?  (Tax preparation, is no doubt a billion dollar business.)

I’m not for dumbing down the written word, or journalists writing to a 6th grade reading level, but come on people.  Can’t we all just try to communicate a little better?

Where’s the middle?

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Where’s the middle?

Social computing has grown in many directions: social networks, social media, personal homes pages, start pages, just to name a few. There seems to be a crazy gravitational force developing, though, that is pulling everyone toward the middle. Those who have stuck to their core technology and/or mission have reaped the biggest revenue benefit. eBay is still tight. Google is tight. Flickr is tight. YouTube and MySpace are tight. But even these companies are beginning to look beyond their missions. They want more pie and they are greedily pursuing it. 

The more they target competitor’s customers and develop competitive functionality, the more they lose focus and differentiation. They are all moving toward the middle. What will we call the middle? How will consumers describe the middle?

Will every main social computing company have so much pie on their face that they become unsightly? Will all those cherries and blueberries and peaches and custards and apples turn into one brown sticky mess?

Billy Bob Thornton’s “Uhhh huhh” comes to mind.